Much is made these days about how callous doctors have become. How selfish and arrogant and dis-engaged they are from their patients.They charge exhorbitant fees and pay only passing attention to their patients’ conditions. They get rich while the poor patients suffer.

All of that is true. Partly. It describes many doctors I know. In fact, in a general sense, it describes a lot of people I know. So I have concluded two things:

1. I should get to know better people.

2. Doctors are human. And they are a part of the same society we all are. They have the same qualities and the same faults that anyone else has.

Now I have to admit that I am a little biased. I myself am a doctor.  But my biased view also gives me a very close look at many of my colleagues who work very hard to get it right. As a pathologist I regularly interact with several doctors in a day. Most of the doctors I talk to are not only interested in their patients’  diagnosis, they are also deeply moved by it. They try hard to get it right. They are by no means perfect. But they are still a lot better than you might think.

Lately a doctor’s life has become rather dangerous. Every patient and every case has the potential to explode, and doctors find themselves living on the edge. Every day patients threaten their doctors with ‘media’ and ‘Geo.’ Just yesterday a patient threatened to break windows in my lab because he thought his results were incorrect. It has become common practice to cite ‘negligence’ by the doctor whenever a patient dies. Regardless of medical facts and circumstance, the cause of death in far too many cases these days is ‘the doctor.’ Never mind that the patient was 78 years old and had terminal cancer. Or that the patient was brought to the doctor in a critical condition, past the point of no return.

A few weeks ago a highly respected critical care physician was beaten up by the attendants of a deceased patient. And I am not talking about pushing and shoving. He and his junior doctor and his nurse and the ICU attendant were all beaten up. It was 2 in the morning, and the doctor had been called in to the hospital in the middle of the night because the patient was considered critical. The doctor was at the bedside when the patient died. The doctor did all he could, but he could not arrange a miracle. And that was the fault for which he and his staff were all physically abused.

As a doctor, as a Pakistani, as a person, I think this is utterly disgusting.  I know that there are many sides to many stories, but aren’t some things off the table. Aren’t some things too extreme. When did we become so ‘jaahil.’

 

 

It’s been a week now, and it’s almost like nothing of consequence happened.

The day US Special Forces conducted a pre-dawn operation in Abbottabad, Karachi was on fire too. Somebody had shot dead a local MQM leader, and there were angry protests all over the city. Cars were burned. Gas stations stopped selling CNG and petrol. Thousands of people were stranded on the streets of Karachi, forced to abandon their vehicles and walk home.

While all this was happening, the government of President was hard at work doing nothing of consequence. The President was swearing in more ministers for the federal government, a political ploy meant to appease PML-Q and isolate PML-N. The indifference to the misery of the common man was plain for all to see.

Now let me be clear; I could not care less about PML or PPP or MQM or PTI or any other political party. What I am talking about is the lack of leadership on display on the morning of Osama’s death. While the media is all hot and bothered about Pakistan’s sovereign air space being violated, the harsh reality that must be faced is that there is a vacuum of leadership in our country.

I am not even talking about one incident. Or one government.

While a third of the country was dealing with floods last year, the President went to the UK to launch his son’s political career.

While the army moved to conduct an operation against the ‘Taliban’ two years ago, neither the President, nor the Prime Minister spoke to the nation about the unprecedented but necessary move of the Pakistan Army taking on Pakistani civilians.

And when Pakistan air space had been breached, the operation completed, and Osama found and killed in Pakistan, the powers that be were caught completely dumbfounded, clueless as to what spin to put on their incompetence.

I have seen this movie before. While foreign forces toyed with our so called sovereign status, the corridors of power were pre-occupied with palace intrigue. Two hundred years ago, no one saw the East India Trading Company as a threat to the monarchy until it was too late. We all know how that movie ended. And today, while our nation’s resources are completely used up, and our country survives from one foreign handout to the next, our ‘leaders’ are just as indifferent  as the Mughal kings of the past.

Time has passed, but the story is the same. Unless we change the script now, we know how this movie will end.

A lot is being made of Pakistan’s status as a sovereign nation.

How dare the US conduct drone attacks inside Pakistan’s territories.

How dare the US conduct a special op in Abbottabad.

We are after all a ‘sovereign’ nation!

 

But are we truly sovereign?

Do we pay our own bills?

Do we produce enough food to feed all of us?

Do we generate enough electricity for our needs?

Do we . . . . do anything that would merit sovereign status?

Sovereign states don’t go begging for handouts. They don’t survive on foreign aid.

 

Pakistanis love to say that the ‘West’ doesn’t want Pakistan to rise as a nation.  As if the ‘West’ goes to bed every night in fear of what Pakistan might accomplish if it were to get its act together.

I want to ask all of us Pakistanis. What are we doing to make Pakistan rise as a nation.

Forget the ‘West!’ Forget everyone else.

A nation’s destiny is either written by its own people, or dictated by others.

So if you don’t like what is being dictated, start working. Start writing.

And shape Pakistan’s future yourself!